The other comments are pretty much on, I've never played a CS 80 but I have played a lot of other synths and own a few; and this is definetly one of the most expressive in terms of control.

The pressure mod is great and really routable, and the long pitch ribbon has to be felt to be believed... I have a MicroMoog with a pitch ribbon and there is no comparison. The keyboard has a very good feel to it as well.

Negatives would include the weight and tuning stability (I got mine with an out of tune filter card and it took me a week with the manual to get it right)(and you have to wait a while for it to stay in pitch tune, and this is from an Oberheim OB SX owner!)and the presets... they are somewhat weak and can't be modified with the filter or ADSR controls. But, you do get the panel switch and the one memory with it's lovely sliders under the panel.

The filters are also a little too nice; you get nice effects by overlapping the low pass and high pass filters, but it's not a substitute for deep low filter sweeps. This does give it a distinctive sound, however.

The synth just exudes Vangelis or Jarre... if you are into either of these artists this may be the cheaper CS for you.

Rating: 4 out of 5
posted Monday-Jul-29-2002 at 16:10

Steve Depaola
a hobbyist user
from (USA)
writes:

The old Yamaha CS-60 is a great synth. Very well made for it's time with a lot of real estate under the hood (it weighs about 100 lbs). I bought mine with one foot in the junkyard and after a lot of labor and love, but not much cash it has been almost completely restored (I'm a DIY tech). No question that I wish it had dual oscillators like the CS80 but it's less complicated and a lot lighter this way. Potential buyers should look for the following: a later vintage which has a thermal mod on the VCO chip on each voice board to prevent tuning drift. Mine is rock stable once warmed up. Check the ribbon pitch controller for an internal broken spring (mine was rusted and broken in several places - quite the procedure to repair but it came out nicely). Get hold of the service manual before buying so you can learn how to tune the boards which are quite complicated for a non-techie (or find a LOCAL tech who can do this).

Having done all that, you will be well rewarded with an analog sound like no other (except the CS80). There is a warmness and charachter that is hard to describe. Maybe it's the VCO's or the pre amp circuitry. As an old anaolg, it doesn't have a wide range of sounds and there's no arpeggiator. But what it does it does well. The ring mod section can yield some cool effects. And the aftertouch control is much more expressive than any modern MIDI keyboard I've ever played. It responds continuously to key pressure and the keyboard "gives" when you press on it. This is the way aftertouch control was meant to be! It's only 8 voice but that's good - only 8 boards to adjust. There's only a few LSI chips inside that would be difficult to find (don't bother with Yamaha - they're out of everything except the manual), otherwise the vast majority of chips and parts are generic, still made and cheap.

Rating: 5 out of 5
posted Friday-Jun-28-2002 at 11:46

david suurland
a hobbyist user
from NETHERLANDS
writes:

well, i must say that although it sound like a single osc version of the cs80 it does lack some of the more interesting features of the cs80. (inital pitchbend/brilliance/level and detune) but hey, it still SOUNDS like the cs80. i own both and if i had the money i would put midi in the cs60 so i would have a 3 osc cs80 !!! cool :) anyway. i think the cs60 kicked the living *** out of my recently sold jupiter 8 as far as emotional sounds goes. the jup 8 is lick a brick whereas a cs60 is like a feather. higly expressive synth, hampered by its 1 osc nature. no tuning problems , but 1 voice card has a strange tweak in that it gives a louder otne than than the others.

a great feature and probably the best is the fact that it has the wonderfull aftertouch features. aftertouch can go to 1: vco mod. (vibrato) lfo -> vco 2: vcf lfo -> vcf 3: brilliance (just vcf)

this can create some wonderfull textures, on the cs80 you have polyphonic aftertouch, the cs60 has monophonic.

get one if you can !

why a five ?? because ot kicks the ass of some other high profile more expensive synths, so thats why i wont give it a four.